


Stalemate

by lulahbelle



Category: The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: Angry Esca, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-13
Updated: 2012-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-31 02:43:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/338998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lulahbelle/pseuds/lulahbelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Esca and Marcus are in an uneasy physical relationship that they don't talk about so what happens when they need to talk about it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stalemate

**Author's Note:**

> This is essentially another clash of sexual mores fic. I've tried to make the characterisation a bit different than versions of this trope that I've read and enjoyed in that my Esca is not saintly patient with Marcus and Marcus is not so love lorn that he's lost himself - I don't think there is enough angry Esca fic.
> 
> I think I stole the initial inspiration for this from a kink meme prompt but it veered enough for it not to really be a fill for it anymore.

For want of better ideas, or so they said, Marcus and Esca threw their lot in together. 

After a few months recuperation back at the Villa, they set out again, travelling from one area to another, looking for a place to begin a farm and truly start a new life. These nights under the stars they spent close to one another for many reasons. Safety, warmth and the ease of talking, but mostly for the feeling of comfort that only came from having one's closest living friend within the easy reach of hands. There, as the darkness of nature around them crested and dreams seperated, the touching of hands became very easy indeed. They rubbed them against one another in sleep and minor wakefulness, grunting and panting utter fulfilment into full consciousness. Lips were licked hot and wet at Marcus' instigation and at times Esca would take his kiss down Marcus' body.

They were silent on this behaviour during their days, but as they ate and talked they stood and sat closer inclined to one another than before. In the hours just before sleep, as they watched luminescent orange fire sparks ascend to the black of the sky, swopping stories of warmth and impressions of the world as they had seen and found it, Esca took to leaning into Marcus' arm.

This natural, moment to moment, conjunction made Esca bold even when they had returned. The hold of his eyes and hands were possessive upon Marcus, even when they went about their day to day business around the Villa.

Such as this time when Esca touched Marcus' face softly, then, with a smile, tugged the lobe of his ear. It was enough for the surge of love in Esca for he was content to look away afterward but Marcus just felt a burning discomfort at the gesture and his face fell still. Esca ignored Marcus' disagreeable expression to his affection as he usually had to, but this time Marcus would not ignore it and asked of him.

"What is it?" 

"It is nothing." Esca replied still with his smile.

"Nothing?" Marcus asked, disbelief sealed in intonation.

"Nothing. Just that you are strong and true and I felt affection." 

Marcus looked away from the love and heat Esca demonstrably held for him, from the warmth growing inside him that he could now make Esca, once so sullen, smile without effort.

"You look down? You take pride in yourself being a son of Rome, an issue you had nothing to do with, but none from the man you've made yourself?"

"Not that."

Esca looked at him curious at his meaning.

"I was not looking away in shame at myself." He cannot find words that he may understand what he felt. "but at the gesture."

"My kinship embarrasses you?"

"The expression of it. It does not seem to me to be proper. It seems weak."

"You overthink things and not in the right ways."

Marcus did not disagree, but knowing the truth was not something that made it easier to bear.

"Do you not like to be touched by me? I think I feel a comfort in your body when I do touch you."

Marcus will not be drawn to comment, Esca pursued.

"Am I wrong? If I am you should tell." 

There was some dark hurt in Esca's spit of these words that gave pressure to Marcus' answer. Their feelings for one another were so unexamined until this point that studying them seemed to threaten to topple them to collapse. Marcus spoke reluctantly.

"You're not wrong, it does soothe me."

"Then why do you war with me over it? Tell me all. What is it that shames you so? I come to you of free will, only meaning to comfort you, why would you choose to take so little from me?"

Unable to find words to speak of his feelings Marcus sat down on a log, withdrawing from the conversation. 

"Marcus?"

Unable to get Marcus to look up to him from his focus on the floor and his sulk of deep feelings, Esca sat on the ground at his feet. Then he kneeled, in close to Marcus in between his bent legs. Soulfully he intoned to him the only thing he felt in his heart and soul.

"I want you and only you."

Esca raised his head beneath Marcus', then holding his cheeks touched their noses together soft and slow, deliberate, in a way that he had several times before. The gesture had some significance to him, but Marcus had never asked him about it. He was always too preoccupied by fear that Esca would tell him of the love the move conveyed and that he would feel shame alongside his delight at eliciting it to do so.

It was so pitiful but the moment Esca touched his cock it was right there straining, ready, aching for him despite Marcus' own attempts to remain apart.

That another person, a slight, male, British slave no less, had him so entirely beneath his hand and will filled Marcus with such shame rose a desire in him to resist, to regroup to defend himself.

All the same Marcus felt himself pulled forward to him.

"You want me too yes?" Esca said to him breathy with sudden excitement. "Perhaps a suck this time?"

It was something Esca had only done for a short period of time to Marcus before being guided away and was not something Marcus had allowed since.

"You have no need to do that."

"No I do not, but I have desire to." Esca whispered in his ear. 

Marcus did not relax to enable it, so Esca tried once more, attempting patience.

"Tell me all of your resistance so I may share the burden you bear."

Marcus studied Esca's face a long while before deciding to speak, then when words came he looked away from him.

"There were men, when I was a soldier, who would fuck with other men. No one respected them. Then there were those who not only fucked with them, but allowed them to touch and tease them out of bed too, who loved other men and indulged them with their mouths. They were the worst, the worst of a disgusting kind. Little more than women."

"You think their view still holds? Even here?"

"I'm not stupid Esca. I know well their view on things is not truth to all men, but it is in my heart. It is how I was raised. It's not only comfort I take from your touch, but awareness of need too, knowledge of weakness. Of all the ways in which I don't measure up with the man I should be."

"Why do you care about the man you should be, when the one you are is so splendid?"

"You don't understand. You wouldn't"

"Marcus I think we share this weakness. It bonded us."

"You are never weak because you do not look upon your feelings that way, you choose not to be ashamed of yourself. You are bold and seeking and you take. I am guilty so I cannot act out, I can only cling or be indifferent and of these two states it feels stronger to be cold."

"How ideally it is that you see me. Surely the reason I take is because I am so weak for you that I cannot keep my hands to myself."

Marcus finally looked Esca in the eyes, his mouth still seized in a twist of disagreement as if he was swallowing some vile taste. Esca was used to having to soothe Marcus from these moments of, these moods when everything about his circumstance and the life he now had was utterly revolting to him. Distraction was all that one could give. An opportunity to use his body and empty his mind. A rub. If one were to give him more of a fuck or a suck perhaps his offense would be balanced.

"You want to kiss me?" Esca asked for he knew Marcus did. Marcus slid his eyes down again and did not.

Esca ran his nose over the flesh of Marcus' neck light, tracing his scent.

"Come to me. Bring your mouth to mine."

Fingertips ahead of him kneading over Marcus' erection and winding up into the ties of his braccae Esca took his head down, desperately nosing at Marcus' chest, wracked with shudders at the thought having Marcus' phallus between his lips, movements too aroused to be smooth. Esca's ownership, his direct, excited pursuit of the dirtiest, most shameful act that there was sent the most illustrious thrill through Marcus. At least it did until the refusal he had forgot came to him strong again and the shame towered above excitement cold and killing.

He grabbed at once to Esca's hair.

"Yes keep your hands in my hair." Esca mouthed, more breath than speech, surrendered to his lust.

"Esca no. No." 

Esca looked to Marcus, his face made him snap back from him.

"You look stricken! Pained at my touch!" Frustrated brutually Esca's voice was spiteful, hurt by his rejection of him. "I am only trying to show you."

"I do not want you to be weak for me."

"I am not your slave anymore, I will be what I want."

His fierceness inflamed Marcus, despite himself, until finally he had no choice but to kiss him, there was no ultimate strength against him.

Esca kissed back and remembered back when he did not return the kiss, having no familiarity with the practise of touching mouths and only the surface fondness for it that came from knowing that Marcus only brought his mouth to his when he was in the very depths of desire for him.

His hand rubbed brisk and hard over Marcus' cock.

Marcus mouth gaped open, his face clearly kept by excitement and joy.

"My mouth feels good." Esca whispered at him, smiling at the fact, then driven on he rubbed over his cock and asked redundantly "and this feels good too?"

"Uh Esca." Marcus' eyes closed.

"Follow it then. Let me kiss you there and you may remember how good it can be."

Marcus did not answer, did not seem to rouse from the state between arousal and disagreement that he had occupied for the whole prior exchange.

"You want to fuck me then? I will let you."

Esca could not be less guileless or pure or beloved.

"I do not wish for any of these things."

"You will not fuck me. You do not love me."

"I've told you things are not so simple. I do not want to fuck you  _because_  I love you and my people they are always of the message that it is disgusting. The thought makes me resist."

"I have had you against my body so many times when we slumbered and we both liked it. Why not inside me?"

"I've told you, it would be shame to make you mine."

"You do not own me anymore, and not ever again, not before this act nor after." 

"I know." Marcus said tired of how bad he felt to upset Esca.

"If you know this then you know my shame is not your concern."

"Esca I am saying it would cause me shame to bring you shame. It is my shame."

Esca rubbed his hand over Marcus' cock once again and it was such a provocative, rebellious touch at that moment it so instantly made Marcus burn and he could not bear it's presumption and defiance. Nor could he bear the want it made him fill with.

"Tell me truly you do not want to feel me."

Marcus pressed his hand, that easy hand down on his cock and offered to him. "Like this I do."

"But my mouth cannot stray from your lips? Your cock cannot stay from my fingers?" Esca asked, outraged by Marcus' continued control of their situation, no longer his master but very much assigning himself the role of authority over their pairing.

Marcus just looked to him sad, as though lamenting a course of events out of his hands and Esca found himself annoyed by his inability to see this as all the fault of his own stubborn inability to relent.

With a loud huff of fury, no longer willing to waste time in argument when he could be inside satisfying himself to the things he and Marcus wanted to do, rather than those Marcus allowed them, Esca scrabbled to his feet once more.

"Marcus this difference between us is not easy for me either but I have learnt I must properly allow. You note that I kiss you now. I kiss! As you know I did not do this before I met you, but you requested it of me and I could not refuse you. You are a fool if you think you can refuse me!"

Esca strode away from him at that his mood like lightning around him. Marcus let him go, he trusted Esca when he said it was not done.


End file.
